I just finished a twelve hour tour of duty in my kitchen which came on top of eight hours yesterday. This is Solstice weekend which means every cookie, tomato sauce, jelly, curd, chocolate and loaf of bread, cooked, baked, canned and packaged for the Solstice occurred in the last 36 hours. I did sleep, I watched a movie too. It was I am Legend and it was good (and I LOVE Omega Man, so there).
In the mean time a Christmas tree was acquired and lights and pretty things were hung and the stockings were located and the menorah and the candles and the latkes, sour cream and apple sauce from the last of the wrapped September apples. The Solstice and Hanukkah coincide this year, which is very, very cool.
Last year we lost Sparky on or about the Solstice and it about blew me apart tonight. I wonder how the hell his family keeps breathing sometimes because half the time I feel like I got the wind knocked right out of me and I really just want to know how long it takes to get over someone?
I make things at Solstice. You can call it whatever holiday you want, it's Solstice timewise. I don't like to buy things unless it's something I know you need and can't buy yourself otherwise I'm going to make something and if you receive something I made it's because I give a rat's ass about you.
That's lost on most people these days. A cookie's a cookie, right?
About ten years ago I made my first batch of 1,000 cookies (or whatever), packaged them up and delivered them in person. They were received or not received as a matter of course until I got to Sparky and you know, Sparky got that half assed batch you give somebody you sort of give a shit about but maybe don't know so well. So anyway, Sparky comes all the way over from building one to building two and tells me this story about making stuff for people and how much it matters and all that and how this stupid box of cookies just about blew him away.
And that story he told just about blew me away. Most of the time, really, seriously MOST of the time, we have no real idea that we matter. Not a freaking clue.
I haven't missed a Solstice since.
I love you, Sparky and it hurts a lot still. I guess the way it's meant to hurt.


A funny thing is happening over at Madcap's place. She stopped writing that particular blog sometime around November 7 and then left the site dormant. Sometime between now and then she collected a mess of comments on that last post which ought to have been enough to keep it active for a bit. In the last few days the site has started to vanish. Note that I did not say MC was vanishing, just the site. It feels funny though. First the prior posts were gone. And then the comments. And then the sidebar links. It reminded me of the book (there was a movie too), The Neverending Story, where the Nothing slowly at first and then quickly ate away at everything we know and expect to be known and reasonably solid leaving us wholly and completely inside the world of illusion and invention until there is just that one spark of a voice speaking... but she might not have spoken at all. Today there was only one sidebar link. I don't know why it's still there. Probably because it's recently active and it might be in her profile. Can't see that either I don't think. There's just that one last voice. And the thing is, MC's not gone, just the site.
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